


you; me; the room

by scoradh



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-17
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-16 03:02:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1329400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scoradh/pseuds/scoradh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They come here every year.</p><p>Written in July 2008.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you; me; the room

They come here every year.  
  
+_+_+  
  
They come here every year.  
  
She'd not been much older than them, at the start. They seemed not to age as quick as she did. Inherited from her father, big dreams about _the best_ , _the most wonderful_ , more prosaically, _lots of return business_. That screwed wrinkles into her face. They were return business.  
  
Mainly couples with children, brightly coloured buckets. A few elderly women in hideous floral prints and worse perms, complained about the tea. They were a surprise. Young. Single, she thought, but together. So very worried. One: hands knotted together, long fingers, nails chewed to the bone. One: the widest smile she'd ever seen that wasn't smiling, nut-brown skin. They glowed, a light through dirty glass.  
  
She never meant to eavesdrop. It happened, though. Carrying mops or breakfast trays - it was hard to keep good staff, better to relegate them to chopping potatoes till she could trust them. You heard things.   
  
"It's all right." - once. The conversation went.  
  
"It's fucking not. Where the fuck - Cape Cod?" Springs.  
  
"Well, we're not, here." More springs. "I love you."  
  
"Shut _up_."  
  
She had to let people in at night, when they forgot their keys. One of the old ladies, drunk and rowdy with her lipstick on her teeth. Worse than a gang of bikers. She passed their door yawning. The bed creaked. She didn't mean to stop.  
  
"Shh."  
  
"I -"  
  
Noises spoke louder than words.   
  
+_+_+  
  
She didn't get a vacation like other people got a vacation. People came to her for that. Summer was the busiest season. She was too young for corns. She had them anyway. She recognised them when they came back. Same hands, different smile.   
  
"Would you like a single or a double room?" Professional. Avid.  
  
"A single would be fine."  
  
"Do you have, like. A honeymoon suite?" She'd call it a giggle, what he did then, only it was earthier - dirtier. She nodded.  
  
The honeymoon suite was new - her idea. She'd picked out the paint, the drapes, the throw cushions (velvet and beads, maroon). "You'll be the first ones to use it."  
  
"Use it, huh?"  
  
"God, shut up."  
  
She went to replace the mints. Homemade, tied up in a little linen bag with a sprig of real herb. The suite took up the whole floor; the door stood ajar. On the balcony, between the sheer curtains and the safe interior - two, one, a mass of sheened skin. Dark strands clung to one cheek, immovable.  
  
She didn't think they saw her, or when she left.  
  
+_+_+  
  
Every year. Once for two months. Once for two days. Several times for less time than they wanted. You got to read people: the ones who'd steal the pillowcases and the gravy boats. The ones who'd tip if you remembered their kids' names. This was their bolthole, their sanctuary.  
  
She watched TV - sometimes. She wasn't stupid. She had nieces and nephews, a daughter who might roll her eyes at their taste one day. It was important that they didn't know she knew. The world knew enough. It saw the wedding ring. She didn't.  
  
+_+_+  
  
The year they missed she missed them. Lipstick teeth died and left her five hundred dollars. A multi-millionaire's wife who wore charity shore shoes. She thought she deserved more than five hundred, the bitch, for the hours spent cleaning the tub of sour milk and unguents and, probably, virgin's blood. She didn't think they'd died.  
  
A card came, signed by one. _Thinking of you_ , it read. _I miss the mints_ , it read. The handwriting that signed the cheques.   
  
"Poor kid," she sighed, who was three years older. (Niece had gone to ten of their shows, cried when one, two, three got married. She knew things like birth years, trivia, now.)  
  
"Who?" Her husband thought she meant their daughter. She kissed his bald spot.  
  
+_+_+  
  
What punched out lines around his eyes when he came alone? She wanted to say the word, but she didn't have to.  
  
"Can I have a room for. I don't know. A month? Two?"  
  
Valued customer.  
  
"I'm kind of on a hiatus."   
  
"Do you have a room in mind?" Not probing, but.   
  
A rictus. "Not the honeymoon suite." Almost a laugh, all pain.  
  
+_+_+  
  
Next time, he came alone, but didn't leave alone. She was the first to see him when he spewed gravel, hours of raking, and came in breathless with the car still running.  
  
"Is he here?"  
  
She nodded.  
  
They left together. It was the last time she saw them apart.  
  
+_+_+  
  
A glass of wine in the mellow evening light. A break between dinner and the myriad last requests. Toothpaste. Tea. Wine. Propositions. She had to laugh: pushing fifty, they probably wanted her daughter. Too senile to see the difference, maybe.  
  
They weren't doing anything much. Not scandalous as she knew scandalous, as she knew they could be scandalous (the moans that shook the walls, the fights that broke them). But so intimate, it was nearly obscene: his head on his shoulder, his hand in his hand.   
  
One caught her eye. Small, secret smile. She nodded, walked on.  
  
+_+_+  
  
They came here every year.


End file.
